Complex Numbers
A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.
The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.
Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.
Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.
I don't celebrate the winter holidays. I don't purchases gifts for anyone in my family for any of their holidays and I don't expect them to give me gifts for my holidays. I have issues with Christmas because my birthday is on December 24 and, when I was a child, my family celebrated my birthday by letting my sibling open one of their Christmas present. Yes, I'm still bitter about that; I'm dealing with it.
Oh, God! I laughed so hard reading your entry. Cheer up, Robert Waltz! Good Friday is almost done and soon, the dust will settle on yet another boring and uneventful year. Till again, the whole cycle continues... Cheers, mate!
I don't shop around Thanksgiving for all the reasons mentioned.
I've worked those holidays, other people's holidays, when I wasn't forced to take them off so I could beg to get my own off. Because, you know, only White Military Christians descended from the Mayflower automatically get days off.
So, yes, I do get the angst although I don't think the linked article was particularly well written.
I met a cute angel once, but when I tried to figure her angle, I found she was born under the wrong sine so I refused to cosine the prenup. She flew off on a tangent and attacked me with a secant. I did not take that as a compliment.
I'm not sure that entire books dedicated to the "now" are needed, but when I am out trout fishing, I can be thinking about the next cast of my fly, or I can be thinking about some jerk at work who pissed me off. That's all there is to it.
I am one deep rapscallion. Maybe I'll write a book about the "now."
What’s one thing you wanted to do in 2020 that you couldn’t do or didn’t get to do? Will you make it happen in 2021?
Well, I've covered this ad nauseam in here already, so regular readers can probably skip this entry.
The answer is "visit Belgium." I mean, there were a lot of things I didn't get to do this year that I wanted to: Nerd Camp, road trips, gambling in Vegas, meeting various WDCers in their hometowns, brewery visits, going to the gym (after February), my usual December trip to California... but the Belgium thing was something I haven't done before and was really looking forward to, and the prompt is like "one thing." So that's the one thing.
Every silver lining has a cloud... wait. Strike that. Reverse it. The one good thing about postponing my trip is that I've been able to learn more French, so by the time I do get to go -- hopefully this year -- I'll at least be able to read some of that language and maybe understand a couple of spoken sentences here and there.
Belgium, however, is a bilingual country, and I'm finding Dutch to be a much more difficult language to learn. "But it's a lot like English!" Yes, it is; it's just enough like English to be goddamn hard for me.
So it's unlikely I'll be able to pick up that language significantly before my trip. I know a lot of Belgians speak English, but I don't want to be one of those Americans who doesn't even try.
Hopefully I'll also get a chance to visit neighboring France and Netherlands while I'm there.
Will I make it happen in 2021? It's possible. What's keeping me from doing it is stuff that's totally not in my control, and you know exactly what I'm talking about. The only thing I can maybe control is getting the vaccine when it's available to me. Which I will do, but I have no idea when that will be. My traveling companion will have to get it too, of course, and then I think there's a wait while immunity builds up. And that doesn't guarantee that they'll let idiot Americans into the EU for leisure travel.
As a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist, though, I can only assume that by the time we get the shots, a mutant strain will pop up that's resistant to it and we'll get delayed again.
And even though I fully expect this to happen, if it does, I shall be quite cross.
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